Today the Afghans asked that we buy them a sheep in celebration of a fellow marine's wife having a son. Good thing it was a son - I wonder how they would have reacted if he'd had a daughter...? Demand that he flay himself? I'm not sure. Slitting the animal's throat and letting it bleed out is the proper way for Muslims to kill something they're going to eat. The killing itself is not the only part of the process that's different; the meat is butchered so that nothing goes to waste - leaving you to dine on small scraps of fat, gristle, and meat attached to misshapen hunks of bone. In the States we're so far removed from the brutality that is required to prepare animals for eating, but then as Americans we're sheltered from reality in many ways these days, which I would say has helped lead to the nanny state we're living in. Or maybe I'm backward as to cause and effect. At any rate, it made a fine meal as usual.